With the distinction between celebrities and influencers getting blurrier as the influencers get more followers, brands are now turning to a new type of influencers. This new type is called “nano-influencers”. They are actually your friends, family, and people who are not doing this job professionally, not yet. On the follower scale, nano-influencers are people with 100-10000 followers. These people are still using social media as regular people but they are just a bit more popular.
The Advantages of Working With Nano-Influencers
- Nano-Influencers are cost-effective
- They create content in a specific niche
- Small creators are more connected to their audience
There are many reasons why brands are choosing to work with smaller creators. On the financial side, nano-influencers are cost-effective. Meaning brands don’t have to go over their budgets to work with them. Most nano-influencers also agree to work on a barter base, which makes the work even easier for the brands. However, brands should also recognize the possible worth of these people, and not take advantage of them just because they agree to promote a product without a fee. It won’t always be like that, so brands have to make sure to compensate the nano-influencers fairly.
Another reason is that nano-influencers usually have one specific niche they create content on. So if you are looking for someone who only shares content for curly haired people, your best bet is a nano-influencer. These people are usually experts in the field as well, whether through education or personal experience.
Nano-influencers are usually more connected to their audience. When you are working with a nano-influencer, you can get more engagement on your brand over time than the engagement you get with a one-shot project. As the nano-influencers are more likely to answer their DMs, comments, and share their expertise on social media, you can be sure that your product will be promoted thoroughly.
Creating Brand Ambassadors
Most popular influencers are already known for their relations to certain brands. Check the well-known fashion influencer Leonie Hanne for example. You can say she is pretty much living with Dior, Chanel, and other high-end brands. To think you can get her on board with your brand without paying a fortune would be a wishful dream. We are not saying she charges a lot, she is just way too famous to charge you a small amount.
With nano-influencers you can create your own brand ambassadors from the very beginning. One-shot projects are no longer an effective way to promote your products, so creating a long-term relationship with influencers are significant. When you give a chance to a nano-influencer to become affiliated with your brand, that influencer will also grow to be a loyal customer to your brand. This way you can get more content to promote your brand over the time than you would if you paid a bigger influencer. But again, there is a catch. You should know they won’t always promote your brand by just receiving their products, and at some point you’ll have to pay them for their work. Just because they are smaller creators, doesn’t mean they are not putting effort into their content.
But it’s not all fun and games with nano-influencers.
If you’ve decided to work with a nano-influencer for your brand, congratulations on making a trendy decision. However, there is something you should look out when you are working with nano-influencers. As these influencers are looking to grow their accounts, they also interact with similar accounts to create engagement. This is all good until an engagement pod comes into play. You can think of engagement pods as people who are paid to applaud a brand, a person or a play. There are usually several people in an engagement pod, and they all like the posts of each other, comment and create engagement. Is this necessarily a bad thing? No. Could this affect the authenticity of the influencer’s engagement? Yes. It is also possible that when Instagram’s AI recognizes this behavior, they might put a shadow-ban on the account. And this could make all your work go to trash.
This is it from us on the topic of working with nano-influencers. There are pros and cons to working with everyone, so do your research before you spend your time and money on a project, or you could be a little disappointed.